University of Vermont College of Medicine Associate Dean for Diversity & Inclusion Margaret A. Tandoh, M.D., recently announced that Michael Upton, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry, has joined the Office of Diversity & Inclusion as faculty development liaison. Upton is continuing his clinical and service responsibilities while taking on this additional new role supporting the development, implementation and assessment of diversity and inclusion initiatives for faculty development.  

A 1994 alumnus of the UVM College of Medicine, Upton completed his psychiatric residency at Dartmouth before returning to Burlington, Vt., to begin his psychiatric practice in 1998. A native Vermonter, his family includes four generations of UVM College of Medicine graduates dating back to the 1890s. Upton, who has served as a staff psychiatrist in the UVM Counseling and Psychiatry Services division of the UVM Center for Health & Wellbeing since 2004, treats UVM students, including medical students. He is also the medical director for the Colby Center for Behavioral Health at Adirondack Health in New York and at Otter Creek Associates in Vermont. His clinical interests include diagnostic evaluation, medication management, and brief psychotherapy models. He has worked in a number of settings including inpatient psychiatry, substance abuse treatment centers and the Veteran’s Administration, and at the local community mental health center.

For more than ten years, Upton has been a faculty member on the College’s medical student Wellness Committee, a confidential peer support system. He is a co-faculty advisor of the College of Medicine’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance and is also a member of the College of Medicine Dean’s Advisory Committee on Diversity & Inclusion. In addition, he has served as an advisor to the UVM LGBTQA Center and on the President’s Commission for LGBTQ Equity, and will begin his term on the UVM Foundation Leadership Council and the UVM Alumni Executive Committee in fall 2016.